Comparative Politics - British Conservativism 2010-2020

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The_Walrus
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18 Mar 2020, 5:38 pm

Karamazov wrote:
^ I have, before now, toyed with the notion that the US parties are both uncomfortable hybrids:

Democrats - conservatives blended with socialists.

Republicans - Economically focused liberals blended with fundamentalist religious identitarians.

Not sure how well that really works as a concept though...

The Conservative wing of the Democratic Party is very nearly dead. Certainly the *white* conservative wing is struggling a lot. In the Senate, you've got Joe Manchin, and that's it. In the House, there's maybe four or five who you could accuse of being conservative and another few who are moderate, but they used to be a serious voting bloc and now they're some ragtag stragglers. But among voters, there's a significant chunk of minority voters who are conservative in a lot of ways but always vote Democrat.

In the Republicans, yes there are some people who you could describe as liberal but amongst elected representatives they've basically disappeared. Even Mitt Romney, for example, is a very religious man who just happens to be pro-business.

I think this is the best analysis of the current shape of the American parties: https://www.people-press.org/2017/10/24 ... -and-left/



Karamazov
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18 Mar 2020, 6:14 pm

^ interesting, thanks for that.

I must confess I find some of the labels used for the groups a bit confusing: so I took the test linked at the bottom.

My self-perception is that I’m rather old-labour, without “Blair issues” or much time for Corbyn & co.
Which would definitely be ‘socialist’ in British usage.
I got ‘solid liberal’ as a result.

I still find the notion of calling people who are ambivalent at best on free-markets ‘liberals’, and people who are all in favour of them ‘conservative’ a bit weird I guess.

Bring back the Victorian era usages! They were clear, and made sense in terms of etymology! says he in an outbreak of linguistic reactionaryism :lol: